Demonetisation is such a success, Modi should do it again on January 1, 2017

What better way to begin the new year than embarking on a holy nationalist crusade against blackest of monies and their hoarders?

ANGSHUKANTA CHAKRABORTY

Dear Prime Minister,

Intensely proud though we are of your jhatka strike on black money and fake money (okay, counterfeit currency notes, but CCN/FCN sound like liberal news channels which we resolutely boycott), why have you gone halal since November 8?

Why are you bleeding the economy drop by precious drop and not severing the limbs of black marketeers and hoarders and money launderers and hacked account holders and Jaguar-roving elders and Rolls Royce boarders in one fell swoop?

Mr Modi, while we are ready to laud all your actions without an iota of critical reflection – after all what’s loyalty if not during the thickest and thinnest of times? – we do, however, think (occasionally, we tell ourselves that we too are capable of thought experiments; here’s one example) that you Sir, are going way too slow with your EDI (Equated Daily Installment, a modified EMI, because, well, escape velocity of Jupiter in Digital India).

Your EDI, sir, of surgical strikes on dark currency (er, not section of the Dravidian sex quotient, if someone had been erroneously wondering, even though Rajinikanth has been seen next to you at Jayalalithaa’s funeral; or not? What? Was it a Photoshop?) is falling woefully short of the RRR (not Raghuram Rajan, as some naughty fliberal – flippant liberal, such as Shobhaa De of the “sex in the sensex” fame), which is Really Realistic Ramboness, benchmark that you created for yourself on November 8.

Actually, RRR is something you created for yourself on May 16, 2014, but let’s shelve it aside for a moment.

Prime Minister, you need to step up and step on the gas. Really. You need to demonetise ALL the existing notes – in one, two, five, ten, twenty, fifty and hundred rupee forms – so that the black marketeers, which their disgusting blue and green cheque-cheque mattresses stashed with ill-gotten wealth, are not spared.

Not at all. Those mattresses, that have covers resembling lungi clothes of celluloid south Indian fishermen who are seen cavorting with their fishing nets as the hero gun-toting and all in designer stuff, darts and dashes for the villain and the heroine – those very mattresses, that stink of non-vegetarian blasphemies with grub and gravy all over them, those mattresses, dear Prime Minister, must be eliminated.

And, those chests of drawers, dear PM, and the lockers, faux-Godrej almirahs that masquerade as register registers, those boxes and little coffers, and suitcases and attaché cases with those shambolic number keys, and those sofas with their horrifying Rexine upholstery – colonial to the core: they all need to go.

Dear PM, let’s do a new Swadeshi movement wherein we burn – publicly and with all the drumroll – ALL the existing currency and ALL the items in our sinned-in lives that hold them. Let’s do a bonfire of the one, two, three, er, sorry, five, ten, twenty, fifty, hundred, two-hundred, er, sorry again, two-thousand rupee notes, so that, so that dear Prime Minister, we come out clean and purified, as in a yagna.

Didn’t you say yourself yesterday – boy, wasn’t that a moment of truth for all of us lesser mortals – that our trial by bonfire, the queue to end all queues, the lines to end all lines, the deaths to end all deaths (at the ATMs, of course), was like the holy fire of a yagna, a big Hindu pyre to let go off all our impurities, by which you naturally mean ALL our cash, everything.

Modi Sir, we hereby offer you our lives and limbs and of course the cash stash. Never mind that 600 million among us do not have a bank in about five kilometres radius from where they live. Or that, former PM Manmohan Singh has called this a “mammoth tragedy”, because as you see it, this is the only comedy India has ever produced.

Jaane bhi do mitron…

Sir, in order to curb the damning influence of the bootlegger Raees Khan, who would soon inflame all the cinema halls from January next year, right after Sir, the national anthem is played, and some non-complying numb-nuts are flayed, we need to act now.

We need to demonetise, and indeed illegitimise, and surgically strike at, and eliminate, and encounter (preferably fake) and gun down and stab in the back, and set on fire, and set off petrol bombs, and take out with AK-47s – ALL OF THE CURRENCY NOTES IN CIRCULATION.

Sir, that way, Urjit Patel need not worry if he’s quiet as the lamb before it bleats itself to death. Death of ignominy, of course sir. The Economist would soon say, and I’m quoting from the future, of couse.

That way, Reserve Bank of India can only print Rs 2000 notes, preferably with your face on it, thereby substantially reducing the pressure and cost of printing so many notes.

That way, your best friend, Jio Bhai, yes, the one and only, would have his sway on ALL the cashless transactions in ALL of India, because hey presto, there wouldn’t be any cash left at all.

So what if about 300 million are driven to instant penury and the vicious poverty cycle of absolutely nothing as savings in the process? They would still be forced to obtain the plastic trump card to the digital utopia that you Sir, with all your heart, want to usher India into.

They’d be driven to obtain Aadhaar cards Sir, and thereby they would in fact start existing in the first place. As the saying goes, if you aren’t online, you aren’t quite there. For the minions, the poor poor of India – the teeming multitudes – the smelly bunch, egad, the dirty, hungry bunch – they’d be thus born again as dutifully digital denizens of India.

And the black marketeers?

Hahaha. Oh sir, they would be at your feet, scrounging for mercy, with their cheque-cheque mattresses and cash stash, burning, burning in the heavenly fire of cashlessness. Swachh. Pure. True. Like Zero, Sir. The truest thing. (So what if they invest everything in land, gold and offshore accounts?

The land, Sir, all those 170 plots that have been earmarked for future BJP headquarters, is soil, sir, part of India, giving off mitti ki khooshboo every time the market value skyrockets. And Panama, Mauritius, Seychelles, British Virgin Islands – such touristy places! Good for the heart! Oxygen, oxygen wallet!)

No cash means no hierarchy of notes. Imagine the pain of carrying Rs 10,000 in 10 rupee coins! And not even senior journalist would be forced to take home Rs 20,000 in Rs 20 notes and turn a newsroom into a little congregation of liberals!